Claim Google Authorship for Your WordPress Website in 3 Easy Steps

Editor’s note: On August 28, 2014, Google ended their Authorship program. To discover what this means for you as an online content creator, check out this post by Sonia Simone.

Hopefully you’ve already caught the importance of Google Authorship, the mechanism by which Google’s search engine rankings can be influenced by Author Rank.

If you haven’t, Google Authorship basically amounts to the biggest shakeup in search since the link. It’s Google’s way of identifying the author of a piece of content to factor it as a signal of content quality.

We realize that most writers and online publishers don’t have tons of time to sift through excessively geeky posts involving underlying website code (rel= “author” or rel=”me” anyone?).

Also, the process up until this point has been confusing, to say the least. Now, that tedious code and confusion is not necessary.

So, if you want to quickly connect your Google+ profile to all of your online content to reap the benefits of this landmark change for online writers, read on.

Easily Claim Google Authorship with the Genesis Framework for WordPress

It’s a truly exciting time for online writers because high-value content that attracts, entertains, informs, and engages enhances the author’s authority, instead of only page or site authority. This in turn will kick in the Author Rank effect, which are search signals that are directly associated with you.

If you’re using WordPress, you’re hopefully already running the newest version (3.5) on your site. Our StudioPress division just released a new version of the Genesis Framework for WordPress with a similarly streamlined feel.

We’ve made it very easy to get Google to associate your content with your Google+ profile. Here’s how.

How to Setup Google Authorship in 3 Easy Steps …

NOTE: Make sure that you backup your site before updating to either WordPress 3.5 or the latest version of the Genesis framework. Also, you must have a Google+ profile to claim authorship, which Google has pretty much made mandatory anyway. 😉

1. Add Your Google+ Profile Link

Go to the edit user screen (and to your profile, if you have multiple authors) in your WordPress dashboard and scroll down until you see the option box for your Google+ profile link. Copy your Google+ profile link and paste it into the Google+ option box. Here’s my Google+ profile link, to give you the right idea:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/109450535379570250650/posts

Here’s what it should look like when you’re done:

To confirm, you can simply view the source of an individual post or page and look for the highlighted code:

Important: Because Genesis allows you to modify authorship for each and every writer on your site, every writer gets to claim authorship of their content. This will be incredibly important going forward, as the best guest writers will absolutely require this of any site they contribute to. And it’s good for you, because for each post they contribute, you also get the benefit of their Author Rank.

2. Add a Google+ Contributor Link

Now you’ll need to add a reciprocal link back from your Google+ profile to the site(s) you just updated. You can do this by going to your Google+ profile page, and editing the “Contributor To” section.

In the dialog that appears, click “Add custom link”, and then enter your website URL. Here’s what that looks like:

3. Test Your Google Authorship Connection

Finally, you’ll want to test that you accomplished the first two steps properly.

Here’s an example of a blog post where Google Authorship has been properly set up and a screenshot to show you the result:

Once you’ve got everything set up you’ll see your profile headshot and name next to all your posts in search results, along with the number of Google+ Circles you appear in. Having your smiling face show up next to your content in Google’s search results can vastly improve click through rates.

Nice, huh?

Give Google a day or two to register the changes to your website. Often, the search engine result aspects of Google Authorship don’t immediately appear.

StudioPress Removes the Guesswork

There’s no doubt, Google Authorship is incredibly important for online writers and publishers. Of course, this is only one feature of all the flexibility, security, and support you get with a Genesis-powered WordPress site.

With the many innovations, threats, and opportunities that constantly arrive for online writers and publishers, you can spend your time keeping up with it all yourself. But why not rely on us to do a lot of that heavy lifting for you?

Assuming you want to establish authorship as yourself for each of these, no you don’t. I have one Google+ account, and I use it to establish authorship for my blog, my post on the StudioPress blog and my posts here (like this one) on the Copyblogger blog.

It wouldn’t necessarily increase the target audience for each blog, what it would do is allow users easier access to your other posts tho – via the ‘more by *author*’ link. It’s also been documented that additional similar posts you have written may appear in search when the reader clicks back – If the reader clicked through to your site and found your content useful (by spending some time on the page or a similar signal) before clicking back to the search results. This only happens if G thinks the other posts may be useful to the searcher.

However even if more results don’t show you’ll still see the CTR boost and a study done last year actually saw a CTR improvement of ~850%!

I’ll come back and link my references, I can’t do it now as I’m using an Android phone and chrome crashes during copy/paste :S

Those aren’t really three niches, they’re three facets of an overarching topic. I’d have one G+ identity you tie to all of them.

It remains to be seen what the best practice will be for people who have authority in fields that are really different — say, stock trading and fly fishing. My guess is that you’ll still want to tie everything to one G+ profile, but we’ll see how things shake out.

Awesome to know that Genesis now includes this as standard as I’ve a fair few clients sho cleverly chose it over building therir own theme from scratch.

It’s interesting to note, however, that I’ve watched Google make author mark-up far easier to to implement over the last 4 months and it seems all that’s required is to link the ‘rel=author’ markup to the author’s name in a bio box using an ordinary anchor tag. Obviously it has to be a verified domain name tied to the G+ profile. I also tend to define the post using the or html5 tags – unsure if that makes a difference or not.

With it being so easy now there is no reason why everyone couldn’t include G+ author, and indeed publisher, markup and finally allow Google to tie rank to user-agents like they’ve been trying to do since 2002 (or 2005?).

The easier it is to do the more people will do it! I know that some people still don’t really see the value in Google+ (let’s be honest, the majority of users are folks like us) but being able to build your own author authority is a good enough reason to create a profile!

Great post Brian! I had actually been using a plugin to do this, but it was very confusing. Integrating this with Genesis makes it ridiculously simple. I just followed your steps and got it working properly in about 30 seconds. EASY. And that testing page was nice to have for confirmation.

I thought I already had the Google authorship markup on all my posts using the Genesis settings in the later version of Genesis. But I was wrong.

On the WordPress “Profile” page in the Dashboard (old and new version of Genesis) there is a heading marked “Google Plus Author Link.” Under that heading there is a place for you to insert your G+ url. I inserted my url and, to test that it worked, I used Google’s Rich Snippets for one of my posts. My G+ picture came up next to my post so I thought all was well. In reality, the “rel=author” was missing in my post’s code.

After following your directions here, “rel=author” is included in all my posts’ code and is followed by my G+ link.

I’m guessing that the “Google Plus Link” box on the WordPress “Profile” page only links your name to your G+ account, but does not enter the “rel=author” in the page’s code.

I was amazed that Genesis is included in this post. 😀 I have been using Genesis Framework for quite many years. Most of my projects are built in Genesis. To all WordPress users, you should read this! Thank you for this post Brian!

hatom-feed
hatom-entry:
Error: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.
Error: Missing required field “entry-title”.
Error: Missing required field “updated”.
Error: Missing required hCard “author”.
Error: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.
Error: Missing required field “entry-title”.
Error: Missing required field “updated”.
Error: Missing required hCard “author”.
Error: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.
Error: Missing required field “entry-title”.
Error: Missing required field “updated”.
Error: Missing required hCard “author”.

All indications are that authorship is the critical thing right now. Google can analyze site authority just by crawling it, but removing anonymity with rel=publisher might become a crucial aspect of site authority going forward. I think it’s definitely worth adding.

Lang, for the author issue, you can add their Google Plus URL to their WordPress user account. This will then associate it with their posts. You will just to want to be sure to have them link back to the blog from their Google Plus page.

I have also tried linking my site to a google+ page, not my personal page.
I set it up because my updates would be for my business, and therefore not of a personal nature. At least that is my thinking.
But the author listed on the Structured Data Testing Tool for a post is the name of the google page not my name.
I still would prefer to have my name as the author, business don’t write, people do, so any further updates would be welcome .

This is great information and well explained tips of how to put this one into action. But I am alittle fussy on if I were to have niche sites what would you suggest? Should I only use my google+ account on the niche that I am using? I have heard if your talking about say sports on your google + account and than you have a niche site about traveling that this could be a big no no in the Google Authorship. Does that make sense and is that correct?

Well, the first question is where you heard that it “could be a big no,” as there’s a lot of nonsense floating around the internet about how Google works. 🙂

How Google is handling Authorship is still very much under construction, so I don’t think anyone can tell you with certainty the right or wrong way to handle divergent topics. In that case, I would look back to Google’s intention for the program. They want to associate a real human being with content, and to recognize those human beings who are creating higher quality content. So I’d suggest doing as little “gaming” as possible.

As for discussing sports on your G+ page — it’s a social site, you should talk about what interests you. But presumably, if you’re creating content around travel, that’s a topic that also interests you, so it would be natural for you to talk about it on G+. And it would be natural for you to be in conversations with others who write about travel.

Think about Gary Vaynerchuk and wine. Gary doesn’t have less authority about wine just because he’s also interested in social media, or the Jets. He’s a human being who’s interested in multiple things.

It’s not what you talk about on Google+ that matters for this (all that might impact your followers). It’s about the content you create on your own websites, and on other websites. You’re letting Google know that the author of that content is you.

I wish I would have had this post two days ago when I struggled to take implement Google Authorship. I “Googled” how to set up Google Authorship and found an article on it. It took me a few tries before it worked. This article was super easy to follow compared to the article I read a few days ago. Oh well…

Brian,
Good post. Based on this information you’ve provided I researched how to add authorship to my own WordPress site. I found out that you can add this to any WordPress theme with a little code addition. I’m verified now. Thanks again.

With the methods listed above, unfortunately, no. Our Genesis Framework adds the Google+ profile option box to the edit user screen, and places the proper link in the head of your website’s code where it belongs.

Debra,
Yes, there is code you can insert on any WordPress theme. I found it by googling “adding google authorship to a wordpress”. It tells you to paste code in the header.php and the functions.php files. Worked like a charm for me…

I suspect this entire article is aimed at Wordpess.org sites. I wish some of these gurus would make the distinction at the start of their posts rather than claiming great new enhancements for “your WordPress website”. Genisis is only relevant to WordPress.org sites as are plug-ins and other geekie stuff unfamiliar to mere writers of copy.
Of course, if I’m wrong I apologise unreservedly.

Debra did not say she was on WordPress.com. She said a WordPress site that wasn’t using Genesis. You made a big leap there, especially since she said she had a design firm build her theme, which would not happen on a WordPress.com site.

That’s because WordPress.com is not a business website platform. We publish content for people running sites that are marketing and selling things, which requires the original self-hosted WordPress due to restrictions at WP.com. WordPress.com is essentially for hobby bloggers and those getting their feet wet first.

I see you’re using WP.com (hope you’re not violating their TOS), and we do sell some themes over there, but it’s not really our focus. Sorry for the confusion. 😉

Google authorship works perfectly with WP.com subdomain sites. I have it implemented successfully through a text widget. However, I’m not sure how long will Google pick that up to show in the search results. But, testing it in the rich snippets testing tool shows it perfectly.

I implemented it a month ago and as of this writing, I’m starting to see Google authorship shows up on my WP.com site. However, not all the pages.

Should you want to implement it, the easiest way to do is through a text widget as I’ve mentioned since WP.com subdomain sites do not allow html editing.

Most of the “mediocre reception” buzz came from the tech press, which was unusually pro-Facebook last year (see also: Facebook’s PR department). This year, it seems that is swapping positions, with people “getting” what Google+ really is, and Facebook being treated more like it deserves.

Thanks for the info Brian. This is definitely a big development with in the way Google displays search results. The way things are looking, Google Authorship is going to be crucial factor when it comes to standing out in the search results.

Robert, I can add some color to this situation. I ran into this problem when setting up authorship for a dentist with his own practice (and a G+ profile and page).

The authorship is going to a person, so anyone looking to establish authorship must have a profile first. So you should link your business website’s authorship to your profile — this establishes you as a person and associates anything you publish on your blog with the profile (and all important head shot on your profile). Google wants to make sure authorship is for a person, not a business. You will be listed as “Contributor to (your site)” in your profile. This also allows you to guest blog and build up your personal author credentials by listing other sites under “Contributor to”.

I’m guessing you spend all of your time on your G+ page, not profile, so you can put a note and link in your profile saying “Please check out my G+ business page” or something along those lines since most of your content will go from your business website to your G+ page via a manual share (e.g., Hey everyone, here’s the latest and greatest from my blog). There are ways to auto-publish from your site to your page (still investigating this one), and you can set up rel=”publisher” (as mentioned by Brian above) to link your site to your G+ page so Google knows your site is a publisher and is tied to your G+ page.

Thanks Brian. My site using Genesis, but I am also using WordPress SEO by Yoast. I have done the rel=”author” tag for my personal profile and the organize page. The questions is should I using the method above in my case? My question is do I have to do the above method? or do I have to disable the plugin?

Great information, that I will certainly share with all of my web clients. Thank you!

I just added my Google Plus profile address under my Profile in WP, and added my site to the “Contributor To” section, steps one and two of your article. Like Vince, I also am getting a few error messages related to the hatom-feed when I put in the url of my site in the Structured Data Testing Tool. And it doesn’t verify authorship. Here are the messages Google is giving me:

Warning: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.
Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.

Can you advise whether I’ve done something incorrectly, or if I just need to wait a little while for the changes to propagate?

I’m getting the same issue but only on certain pages. Some pages I don’t get that issue, others I do. I’ve manually put my publisher information in the header (in the dashboard) and the author tag is added via my user profile in the dashboard.

I can’t understand why some pages are showing this issue when others aren’t? Is it a problem with the Genesis framework or could it be an issue related to my custom built Genesis theme?

I’m running Genesis 1.9.1 and I’m experiencing the same problem. The G+ field is not there. I run a multi-blog, so maybe that’s the issue? I’ve got 5 microsites under the same domain, but that shouldn’t be an issue. Thanks.

This is something that needs to be done via the Network Admin edit user screen, and not on the individual site edit user screen. I just confirmed this on our StudioPress demo sites, which is built on WordPress multi-site.

Thank you! As a 50 + YA fiction writer, I can get very lost in the many things one has to do on the internet for website visibility and am still only learning about SEO. Can I ask, in the Google Plus settings, should I be also listing my website’s subpages? I’ve done so, just in case.

I’m trying to create another Google account. No matter what user name I use, it says it’s already taken. How is that possible? I went ahead, restarted my computer, cleared all cookies. Even asked a partner from Denmark to create a new G account. Nothing works.

Did you guys experience this before, or could you try yourself and see what happens? I mean, no Google account, no Google Plus, and no authorship option possible, right?

The easier it is to do the more people will do it! I know that some people still don’t really see the value in Google+ (let’s be honest, the majority of users are folks like us) but being able to build your own author authority is a good enough reason to create a profile!

Is it possible to use your your Business Google+ Page as the authorship. Although I do have my own personal Google + account, I would like to keep them separate and come from an authority point of view from my business.

I have just purchased Genesis, and would appreciate your advise on how to best set up authorship.

I have a google + account under my own name (Laura Vermont), which I am not active on. Tied to this account are 2 Google + pages, in completely different niches (Healthy Living and Internet Marketing). I am active on both of these pages, which have a completely different target audience.

Would you recommend I set-up Google authorship for myself (Laura Vermont) on both of my websites (Healthy Living website and IM website), or should the Google authorship on my Healthy Living website link to my Google + Health page, and the Google authorship on my IM website link to my Google + IM page?

Hi I have this set up but it doesnt seem to work on my single posts? Perhaps because of the way my site is indexed I think?

for example if you search ‘black gold of modena journeytom’ my site should come up and the post about this is the top entry. The slug or index for this post just shows ‘journeytom.com > Destinations’ rather than the actual address of’http://journeytom.com/acetaia-di-giorgio-the-black-gold-of-modena/’

I presume this is why it is not working for me? If anybody could help me explain why that would be great!

I’m having some trouble setting this up and was wondering if you could help.
When I go into my user profile, I don’t actually have a box to input a link to my Google plus profile. Instead, I have a box where I can input my “jabber/Google talk.” I have double checked that I have the latest version of WordPress installed, and my home page says that I do, and that it is version 3.5.1. I don’t know what jabber or Google talk is, but this whole set up won’t work if I put my Google plus profile link in that box, will it?

I have implemented all the steps given here and absolutely my google authorship has been started displaying in the Google search engine. It is one of the best method to display Google Authorship. Thanks again.

I’m pulling my hair out…. I’ve done all steps necessary, I’ve checked and rechecked everything to make sure its right but yet I can’t figure this out. I know I know how to do the Google Authorship set-up because I did it with another blog, but on my WordPress site I can’t get it to work.

Got an answer from Studiopress:
“Since Google Authorship is part of the Genesis SEO features, you won’t see these options if you are using another SEO plugin like Platinum SEO. I do see you are using that SEO plugin.”
That worked!

I am trying to get my ref=’publisher’ link on my homepage only and the other pages have my rel=’author’ – is there a way to do this?…i have been told (and please correct me if I am wrong) that having both author and publisher on the same page will cause them to not function properly….anyone provide any assistance/advice? Much appreciated. Thanks!

I am trying to get my ref=’publisher’ link on my homepage only and the other pages have my rel=’author’ – is there a way to do this?…i have been told (and please correct me if I am wrong) that having both author and publisher on the same page will cause them to not function properly….anyone provide any assistance/advice? Much appreciated. Thanks!

After you follow the instructions in this post, install the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. Then navigate to SEO -> Titles & Metas -> Home
You should see a field to enter your Google Publisher Page link. Fill it in and save the settings. Your home page will now use the Publisher field and the individual posts will use the author field.

I did that and it worked however I’m wondering if having both of those on your website will be conflicting.
Google publisher is still pretty new and it will not show your company logo in the serps.

Another company I know only has authorship and when you search for their company name in google his photo appears next to his google +local (formerly places) listing. So his photo is appearing on both pages and posts.

When I had publisher on the home page my photo did not appear. Waiting a few days to see if it shows up.

Now, you can test it with Rich snippets testing tool. That will show your picture in the search results preview.

I basically itemized what was mentioned in the original post with the addition of the screenshot. Hope that will help you review what you have done. I’ve looked at your page source and there is no rel=”author” tag.

If your picture does not show in the search results preview in rich snippets testing tool, verify if you have the rel=”author” tags when you view your homepage source page. Which should look like this…

To view source page, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+U for both Firefox and Chrome. Once the source page is opened search for rel=”author” by using CTRL+F to bring up the search box. For Firefox, it is located at the lower-left corner and upper right for Chrome.

Thank you so much for taking your time to respond to my question. I took all those steps and it’s still not working unfortunately. I’ve got no idea what to do with the rel=”author” tags so I’ll get someone in to help me.

HELP! I don’t see that window you’re showing in the beginning of your tutorial. There’s nothing saying add google+ profile. Do I need to upgrade and own my domain on wordpress in order to create authorship?

What about a blog with multiple authors? In the way you have explained, chances are there that Google will show a guest author as the primary author of the blog, along with the blog name in the SERPs. What to do in such a case? Can we add a link to our Google+ profile with the rel=”author” parameter, in the footer of our blog and then link to the site from our G+ profile. Will it work that way?

Great article, thank you! … have Google authorship confirmed, but can’t figure out how to get site verification. I use Genesis Eleven40 and all the instructions on the internet say to update the title area in header.php file with Google’s meta tag (this is the method I’ve chosen because I’m too dopey technically to do other alternatives). However, the Genesis parent header.php file says Under No Circumstances! to alter the file. So, where do I put this meta tag stuff to update header/title information? Google will not verify the site without it.

I was amazed that Genesis is included in this post. 😀 I have been using Genesis Framework for quite many years. Most of my projects are built in Genesis. To all WordPress users, you should read this! Thank you for this post Brian!

Are there other factors that Google looks at when they determine to use the photo or not? For example, all my posts are correctly marked, and the rich snippet test confirms this and displays my photo. However, my photo never shows up in search results. It’s a clean headshot, but I am wearing sunglasses so maybe that’s why it’s not displaying?

Hi, great article with lots of practical to the point info. I’ve linked my personal website to my Google+ profile already and will shortly do so with two other business websites I operate. I have a question though than nobody seems to be able to give me a clear answer to so maybe I can pick your brain a little 🙂

My website has an in-built blog & the site is linked to Google+. Is it neccessary for me to include the words “by Darrell Cuthbert” in each blog post / article that I post to get the benefit of authorship or will Google pick up that I am the author automatically by virtue of the website / Google+ connection?

Also, what happens if I contribute to a 3rd party site not linked to my Google+? Will the byline “by Darrell Cuthbert” create any kind of authorship benefit or links to my Google+ profile.

I managed to get my google+ pic showing up next to my website in google search results only three weeks after I set it up. Things were going well, but a few days after I changed the look of my website’s footer, and in so doing moved the link to my google+ page into an html table for layout reasons, the picture no longer shows up next to my site in google search results. Has the moving of my google+ link in my footer harmed my authorship markup? Or do I have to wait a bit for Google to realise that I have not deleted the link but just moved it?

One of my SEO Consultant friends told me that using a WP plugin is not the most effective way, rather this should always be done via code changes. Now, I am a non-techie so don’t understand website code that well and comfortable with WP plugin but if that not the best way to implement this then will not take WP plugin route.

I am new to this authorship thing and I really want to see my profile connected to the blog on my name until I post further. I don’t know how to enter the user screen and put the rel=author link somewhere in the myriad of codes. Apparently I am not very familiar with it. I would greatly appreciate any help I could get from anyone.

Kudos to this post though, it is very informative but I am stuck on step 1 🙁

Philip, here is a tutorial that will help you easily accomplish this all-important step. 🙂 It requires installing the WordPress SEO plugin by our friend Yoast, which should help make this easier on you.

Then, when you post, google sees your google plus address in your author box, recognizes you as a Google Plus account holder, and then verifies by looking in your Google Plus account for a link to your website.

In addition, if you’re the sole author of your website, you might also place a link to your Google Plus profile in your footer (using Genesis Simple Edits plugin). Another way to do this site-wide is to include the link code in your header via Genesis Theme Settings.

What if I contribute to a number of blogs and have a different username for each of them? For Example – on blog abc.com i contribute as thisisme@abc.com, on blog pqr I contribute as thisisme@pqr.com, and so on.